Today I found this undated newspaper clipping which I suspect is from a ca. 1953 Daily Olympian. It had some local trivia I was previously unaware of-- Julia Ward Howe was at one time a Tumwater land owner! I'd be curious to know exactly where this chunk of land is today. Here's the text from the clipping:

Julia Ward Howe Once Owned Land Near Tumwater

The author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic Julia Ward Howe, was one time a property owner in Tumwater. She was so impressed with the surroundings of the Capitol city in 1888, while on tour throughout the west, that she bought from B.F. Snyder 25 acres northwest of Tumwater for $300.

In 1906 County Treasurer Fred Schomber received the following letter from the noted author:

241 Beacon Street,
Boston, Mass.,
March 8, 1906

To the Collector of Taxes,
Thurston County,
Dear Sir:
Being badly crippled by illness, I must use the hand of another in asking you, kindly to send me my bill for this year. Inclosed, and envelope stamped and addressed for your answer.

I shall be greatly obliged for any information which you may be willing to give me concerning the condition of my property in Tumwater, and the liklihood or otherwise of it coming into market.
Yours with much respect.
(signed)Julia Ward Howe
Dictated

So to confirm this info, I found this passage in Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 / by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott ; assisted by Florence Howe Hall. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915. It takes place in the spring of 1888:

After Tacoma came "hospitable Seattle"; where she lectured and attended a meeting of the Seattle Emerson Club; then to Olympia, by a small Sound steamer.

"A queer old bachelor on board, hearing me say that I should like to live in Washington Territory, said he would give me a handsome house and lot if I would live in Olympia, at which several Olympians present laughed."

She left Olympia by train, en route for Portland. The conductor, "Brown by name," saw the name on her valise, and claimed acquaintance, remembering her when she lived in Boylston Place. Soon after, passing a lovely little mill-stream, with a few houses near it, by name Tumwater, she consulted him as to the value of land there, with the result that she bought several acres of "good bottom land."

This was one of several small purchases of land made during her various journeyings. She always hoped that they would bring about large results: the Tumwater property was specially valued by her, though she never set foot in the place. The pioneer was strong in her, as it was in the Doctor; the romance of travel never failed to thrill her. Speeding hither and thither by rail, her eye caught beauty and desirableness in a flash; the settler stirred in her blood, and she longed to possess and to develop. Tumwater she fondly hoped was to bring wealth to the two eldest grandchildren, to whom she bequeathed it.

In Portland she spent several days, lectured three times, and was most hospitably entertained. On her one disengaged evening she went down into the hotel parlor, played for the guests to dance, played accompaniments for them to sing. She spoke to the school children; "she made slight acquaintance with various people," most of whom told her the story of their lives. Briefly, she touched life at every point.